Vincere

One day’, the young Mussolini assured his mother, ‘I shall make the whole world tremble!’ He didn’t, but such a hyperbolic and pompous statement is typical of the odd little man that young boy would become, famously crowning himself ‘His Excellency Benito Mussolini, Head of Government, Duce of Fascism, and Founder of the Empire’.

Vincere tells the tragic story of Ida Dalser whom ‘Il Duce’ attempted to airbrush out of history. Dalser was Mussolini’s first wife who funded his early political activities and bore him a child (named after his father) but was soon discarded by Mussolini as he rose to power, taking another wife and denying any knowledge of their past. When she refuses to accept this and speaks out, she has her son taken away from her and is banished to a mental institution where she persists in her determined efforts to get recognition for herself and her son.

The director, Marco Bellocchio (Fists in the Pockets), treats the story as a highly stylized theatrical melodrama. It is operatic in both its content and style and sets out its stall from the opening credits with a rousing grandiose score. He directs with a mannered camera and, with his cinematographer Daniele Ciprì, captures beautifully lit interiors and stage-like exteriors in sumptuous tones. At times he holds static shots that immerse the audience in the power of the image. Bellocchio is very much concerned with both image and expression and creates many moments of close ups that elevate understanding beyond dialogue.

On top of the to-be expected black and white archive footage, the film includes stylistic nods to Futurism, a popular movement in Italy that admired violence, glorified man’s technological triumph over nature and was fiercely patriotic. Its chaotic nature and smear of madness is used effectively throughout the film to mirror a sense of what the country itself was going through during this time as it was dragged under Mussolini’s spell.

The film can be seen as historical allegory and seems to engage with the power of seduction. There’s a wonderful scene at the outset of the film when Dalser first falls for Mussolini’s charismatic megalomaniac as he stands up in front of a crowd and goes head to head with God – a scene that reflects somewhat how a nation itself was to be seduced by a man who carried out such pompous acts of theatricality.

But ultimately Vincere is Dalser’s story of abandonment, betrayal, and incarceration and it is her story that fuels the sentiment behind the film. And it is a demanding role that is wonderfully undertaken by Giovanna Mezzogiorno. She has that marvellous gift of being able to summon up a storm of emotions within her eyes alone and blazes up the screen with a performance of visceral ferocity. Some of the scenes are painful to watch as she maintains her futile agenda, but her courage of conviction is admirable and Mezzogiorno never seeks our sympathy.

Filippo Timi plays both Mussolini and toward the end of the film his son and brings the perfect amount of theatricality to the roles, one bordering on the carnivalesque comedy of the dictator’s pomposity and self-importance, while the latter steeped in sadness that his father’s mannerisms had now become clinical symptoms. When Timi slips out of the film in his first incarnation, he is sorely missed. Yet in a way this allows for his return later on in his second role – it also highlights the strength of Mezzogiorno’s performance as she becomes the film’s central focus.

Ida Dalser and her son by Mussolini both died in mental institutions. She died of what was officially recorded as brain haemorrhage. He, after repeated coma-inducing injections. She was 57. He, only 26. As Dalser herself once wrote, ‘Not even Nero or Caligula would have done what you have done’.

(Vincere is released 14th May)
Film Ireland